A bear and his love of music, among other things...

August 19, 2009

Can't Even Carry A Tune With A Bucket?

If you're one of the unlucky people who is tone-deaf, it turns out your brain may have a wiring problem. That's what new research published Wednesday suggests.

People who are tone-deaf can't detect differences in musical pitch but usually have normal hearing and speech. Tone-deafness runs in families, and estimates of how many people have the problem range from 4 percent to 17 percent.

In the small study done in Boston, brain scans showed there was a difference in a particular brain circuit between those who were tone-deaf and those who weren't. Among the tone-deaf, researchers discovered there were fewer connections between two areas of the brain that perceive and produce sounds.

One of my friends is tone-deaf. It's so funny hearing her sing or whistle a song. She just stays on the same note while varying the rhythm. Sorta sounds like Morse code.

She enjoys music, so I'm wondering what exactly she hears. Can she hear that there are different notes or is she always hearing the same tone in every song? I've asked her before but it's not something that she can explain. Still, I wonder.

I don't confuse this with not being able to sing. Some people know how a song is supposed to go, but their voice isn't trained to reproduce the melody. They actually do better when they "convey" the melody with shorter syllables like "la, la, la" or "do, do, do". That's probably why songs that have these sing-along parts ("Loving You", "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da", "Gypsy Woman", ) do do do so well: Everyone can sing them!